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Bank Transfer Day Hits the Big Banks Where It Hurts

Is the Occupy movement a success or failure? One measure was the Bank Transfer Day where Americans of all income levels moved their money out of accounts from Big Banks you benefited from the bailouts without giving back. An estimated 40,000 Americans left the Big Banks behind earlier this month. And the impact is already starting to be felt.

More Americans opened new accounts with community credit unions last month that usually do all year – 650,000 new accounts in October alone — according to the cg42 which does consulting for most of the nation’s biggest banks. And the result for Bank Banks: they have about $185 billion less of your money to play with. Bank of America appears to be the hardest hit and could lose 10 percent of its value and as much as $42 billion in consumer deposits.

Now while $185 billion seems like a lot of money, it’s not — The nation’s 10 top banks control retail deposits valued at slightly more than $2 trillion. But cg42 believes the “dump your bank” movement isn’t over yet.

From CNN/Money: “John Ulzheimer, credit specialist at SmartCredit.com, said that while cg42’s projected losses seem a little high, he does think a growing number of big-bank consumers will be heading for the exits in the new year.

Many disgruntled customers have taken the first step of opening an account at a smaller bank or credit union, but have yet to close their account at the larger institution — mainly because of the time and effort it takes to do things like switch their direct deposit, set up direct billing and secure a debit card. Once consumers get that last bit of motivation they need, banks could see a big dip in deposits, he said.

“I can see a ‘dump my bank’ as a popular [New Year’s] resolution this year,” said Ulzheimer.

“The efforts by a handful of Congressmen and Senators to restore the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies, was killed by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), before the Senate and House bills were voted on. In that move against any meaningful reform, Dodd and Frank had the full backing of President Obama and his economic team”.http://www.larouchepac.com/node/15015